Kirkcudbright in Dumfries and Galloway

Visit Kirkcudbright and the surrounding villages and stay in bed & breakfast accommodation:

Kirkcudbright, Dumfries and Galloway. An old royal burgh on the estuary of the Dee, Kirkcudbright is the capital of the Stewartry, and houses several of the county administrative departments.

Some of the streets are unwidened and unchanged since the 18th century; the 17th-century tolbooth still stands, and the great pile of McLellan's Castle, built in 1583, still dominates the harbour. The Stewartry Museum houses a fine, well-displayed collection of local antiquities; Broughton House, the l8th-century seat of the Murrays of Broughton, in High Street, was latterly the home of the artist E. A. Hornel, the rooms being displayed as he left them; it houses many of his paintings.

The town has long been the home of an art colony — painters, weavers, and potters; many summer courses in art are held in the town, and a whitewashed cottage beside the harbour is now a gallery for exhibitions.

Kirkcudbright was an active port in the late Middle Ages and in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the 1570s it was much troubled by Leonard Robertson, pirate, and burgess of Leith and Kirkcudbright; the Council made repeated efforts to get his “Men of Weir and Marinaris” to cease their “tuelyeing and harlotrie” and leave the town. He had captured a rich merchant cargo in the Chester Dee and sold it to the lairds around Kirkcudbright. When Queen Elizabeth of England complained to King James VI of Scotland, he appointed a commission consisting of those same lairds to look into the matter.

About ½ mile South of the town is the mound of the l3th-century castle (partly excavated in 1906) of Castledykes, and the site of the priory of St Mary of Traill, at St Mary's Isle.

A little over 1 mile North of the town is the pretty site of Tongland Abbey beside the rocky Dee gorge; its abbot was murdered at the altar in 1235 by the Scottish forces after the Galloway revolt. Its most famous abbot was John Damian, Dunbar's “Fenyent Freir”, a charlatan and alchemist noted for his attempt to fly from the battlements of Stirling Castle. This Scottish Icarus made his attempt in the presence of James IV; it was no doubt an effort to please and startle this superstitious Renaissance Prince who was King of Scotland at that splendid yet fateful time. A fine l4th-century arch, richly carved, stands at the entrance to the later church and a few yards from the present church.